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Yankees Sign Matt Carpenter To Major League Contract

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The Yankees announced they’ve signed Matt Carpenter to a big league contract. The veteran infielder had been granted his release from a minor league deal with the Rangers a week ago. Carpenter is a client of SSG Baseball.

New York also announced they’ve selected left-hander Manny Bañuelos onto the big league roster. The Yankees had optioned outfielder Estevan Florial and left-hander JP Sears to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre to clear two active roster spots last night.

Carpenter was one of the game’s best hitters for a good portion of his tenure with the Cardinals. He posted above-average offensive numbers each season from 2012-18, earning a trio of All-Star selections along the way. He earned a Silver Slugger award in 2013 and twice finished in the top ten of NL MVP balloting. As recently as 2018, Carpenter had posted an excellent .257/.374/.523 slash line with 36 home runs.

Things have gone sharply downhill over the past few years, however. As he hit his mid-30’s, the left-handed hitter experienced a dramatic decline. Going back to the start of the 2019 season, Carpenter owns just a .203/.325/.346 mark in a bit more than 900 plate appearances. He’s continued to draw walks at a robust 13.3% clip, but that’s essentially been the only positive in his offensive game. He’s fanned in 27.9% of his plate appearances, posted a below-average .143 ISO (slugging minus batting average) and hit only .270 on balls in play.

St. Louis bought Carpenter out at the end of last season, and he was limited to minor league offers over the winter. The 36-year-old was forthright about the necessity of reinventing himself at the plate, and he chronicled some changes he’d made with Ken Rosenthal of the Athletic in February. The former TCU star signed a non-roster pact with the Rangers shortly after the lockout, and he’s shown some signs of a turnaround.

Through 21 games with Triple-A Round Rock, Carpenter put up a .275/.379/.613 showing. He hit six homers while continuing to draw plenty of free passes. Perhaps most encouragingly, he trimmed his strikeout rate to a lower than average 21.1%. Texas didn’t feel he had a path to playing time on the big league club, but the Yankees will give him the opportunity to try to carry over his strong work in the minors against MLB pitching.

Carpenter started exclusively at first base for Round Rock, but he has plenty of experience both at second and third base in the majors. He figures to see some time at all three spots in the Bronx, offering manager Aaron Boone a left-handed bat off the bench. The Yankees have Anthony Rizzo at first base, but right-handed hitters Gleyber Torres, DJ LeMahieu and Josh Donaldson seeing action at the other positions.

LeMahieu hasn’t played in a couple days due to some left wrist discomfort, and designated hitter Giancarlo Stanton hit the injured list last night with ankle inflammation. Carpenter doesn’t have the defensive versatility of utilityman Marwin González, but he could offer a bit more punch at the plate. New York deployed Rougned Odor in a similar role last season.

As for Bañuelos, he’s back in the big leagues for the first time since 2019. The 31-year-old is set to make his first appearance in pinstripes, a debut many fans anticipated a decade ago when the southpaw was ranked among the Yankees’ top prospects. Unfortunately, he experienced some injury trouble on his way up the minor league ladder, and the Yankees dealt him to the Braves in advance of the 2015 season. Bañuelos made seven appearances with Atlanta as a rookie, then didn’t pitch in MLB again until a 16-game stint with the 2019 White Sox.

Between those two seasons, the Mexico native tossed 77 innings of 6.31 ERA ball. He spent a couple years out of affiliated ball, including a stint in Taiwan’s Chinese Professional Baseball League. Bañuelos returned stateside on a minor league deal with his original organization over the winter, and he’s earned his way back with a strong start in Scranton.

Over seven appearances (five starts) for the RailRiders, Bañuelos has a 2.35 ERA through 30 2/3 innings. He’s posted roughly average strikeout, walk and ground-ball marks and will presumably add a multi-inning arm to a bullpen mix that has lost Chad Green, Jonathan Loáisiga and Aroldis Chapman to injury recently.

The Yankees had two vacancies on their 40-man roster, so no additional move was necessary at the moment. Donaldson will require a 40-man spot whenever he’s ready to return from the COVID-19 injured list, however. Rob Brantly, recently designated for assignment, has cleared outright waivers and been assigned to Triple-A. The veteran has the right to refuse the assignment in favor of free agency, having been outrighted in the past.

Image courtesy of USA Today Sports.

Roster Notes: Twins, Marlins, Pirates, Yankees, Cubs, Phillies

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With the season just a few days away, roster decisions around the game continue to trickle in. We’ll round up some notable non 40-man roster decisions here.

    • Twins pitching prospect Jhoan Duran has made the Opening Day roster, per a club announcement. He’ll initially work out of the bullpen. Ranked the #9 prospect in the Minnesota organization by Baseball America, Duran draws praise for an upper-90s fastball and a power splitter that have helped him run plus strikeout rates throughout his minor league career.
    • The Marlins have informed outfielder Roman Quinn he will not make the Opening Day roster, reports Craig Mish of SportsGrid (Twitter link). It comes as a bit of a surprise, as Quinn had seemed the favorite for a fourth outfield role after the Fish released Delino DeShields Jr. over the weekend. Presumably, that job will fall to utilityman Jon Berti early on.
    • Infield prospect Diego Castillo has made the Pirates’ Opening Day roster, tweets Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Castillo, acquired in the trade that sent righty Clay Holmes to the Yankees, will make his big league debut the first time he gets into a game.
    • The Yankees announced they’ve reassigned outfielder Ender Inciarte and left-hander Manny Bañuelos to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. Inciarte has an opt-out clause in his minor league deal and tells ESPN’s Marly Rivera he hasn’t yet decided whether he’ll accept the assignment to Triple-A.
    • The Cubs informed pitching prospect Ethan Roberts he’ll be on the Opening Day roster, he informed reporters (including Maddie Lee of the Chicago Sun-Times). A fourth-round pick in 2018 out of Tennessee Tech, the right-hander is the #33 prospect in the organization according to Baseball America. The reliever posted an even 3.00 ERA over 54 innings between Double-A Tennessee and Triple-A Iowa last season. The Cubs reassigned non-roster invitees Jonathan Holder, Robert Gsellman, Steven Brault, Stephen Gonsalves and Ildemaro Vargas to Iowa, tweets Jordan Bastian of MLB.com.
    • The Phillies reassigned non-roster invitees Ronald Torreyes, Yairo Muñoz and Dillon Maples to Triple-A Lehigh Valley, tweets Todd Zolecki of MLB.com. Torreyes and Muñoz were competing for utility spots, while the hard-throwing Maples had been seeking a spot in the Philly bullpen.

 

Yankees Sign Ryan Weber, Manny Banuelos

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The Yankees recently signed righty Ryan Weber and southpaw Manny Bañuelos to minor league contracts, according to Chris Hilburn-Trenkle of Baseball America. Both pitchers were minor league free agents, allowing them to sign non-roster deals during the ongoing transactions freeze.

Weber has pitched in the big leagues in each of the past seven years. The sinkerballer has worked in a swing capacity, starting 16 of his 63 appearances and tallying 167 cumulative innings. While he’s only punched out 14.9% of batters faced at the MLB level, Weber has demonstrated excellent control (5.4% walk rate) and racked up grounders on over half the balls in play against him.

The 31-year-old only made four MLB appearances last season, although they came with three different teams. He made one outing each with the Red Sox and Brewers and pitched in a pair of games for the Mariners. Weber spent the bulk of the year with those teams’ respective Triple-A affiliates, combining for 103 1/3 frames of 4.18 ERA ball with a minuscule 3.1% walk percentage in generally hitter-friendly settings.

While Weber has the more recent MLB run of the Yankees’ two new pitching additions, Bañuelos is probably the more familiar name to much of the fanbase. Added by the Yanks as an amateur out of Mexico during the 2008-09 signing period, Bañuelos fairly quickly developed into one of the sport’s top pitching prospects. Baseball America ranked the southpaw among the game’s top 50 overall farmhands entering both the 2011 and 2012 campaigns.

Unfortunately, Bañuelos’ progress was beset by injuries as he hit the high minors. He missed the entire 2013 season recovering from Tommy John surgery and wasn’t as effective upon returning. New York traded him to the Braves in advance of the 2015 season. Bañuelos debuted with seven appearances for Atlanta that year, then didn’t pitch in the majors again until 2019 with the White Sox.

Those two seasons mark his only big league experience to date. Across 77 innings, Bañuelos owns a 6.31 ERA with subpar strikeout and walk rates (17.7% and 12.6%, respectively). He’s spent the past two seasons pitching professionally in foreign leagues, appearing in Taiwan’s Chinese Professional Baseball League and in the Mexican League. He’ll return to affiliated ball with his original organization in an attempt to get back to the majors for the first time in three years.

Manny Banuelos Signs With CPBL’s Fubon Guardians

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Left-hander Manny Banuelos has signed a deal with the Fubon Guardians of the Chinese Professional Baseball League, according to several reports out of Mexico (hat tip to the CPBL Stats website).  Banuelos had most recently been a member of the Mariners organization, before Seattle released him from his minor league contract at the start of June.

2019 marked Banuelos’ return to the majors, after he hadn’t pitched in the Show since tossing 26 1/3 innings as a rookie for Atlanta in 2015.  Those interim years saw Banuelos bounce from the Braves to the Angels to the Dodgers before being dealt to the White Sox in November 2018.  Banuelos tossed 50 2/3 innings for Chicago last season, starting eight of 16 appearances and posting a 6.93 ERA, 1.33 K/BB rate, and 7.8 K/9.

Once a very highly touted prospect coming up in the Yankees’ farm system, Banuelos’ career has been stalled by injuries (particularly a Tommy John surgery that kept him from pitching in 2013) and a lack of consistency at Triple-A, let alone during his brief Major League career.  Still only 29 years old, Banuelos will now head to the New Taipei City-based Guardians to try and carve out a niche for himself in the CPBL.  Chin-lung Hu, Henry Sosa, and Fu-Te Ni are other former big leaguers also playing on Fubon’s roster.

Mariners Release Manny Banuelos

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The Mariners recently released left-hander Manny Banuelos, according to the Pacific Coast League transactions page. Banuelos only spent a few months with the Mariners, who signed him to a minors pact near the beginning of February.

Now 29 years old, Banuelos ranked as one of the sport’s premier pitching prospects while part of the Yankees’ farm system. Banuelos topped out as Baseball America’s 29th-best farmhand in 2012, though injuries – including Tommy John surgery – have played a part in preventing him from realizing his potential.

Although his career hasn’t turned out as hoped so far, Banuelos is at least coming off a year in which he racked up a solid amount of innings as a member of the White Sox. He totaled 50 2/3 frames over 16 appearances (eight starts), though Banuelos could only notch a 6.93 ERA/6.57 FIP with 7.82 K/9 and 5.86 BB/9. It was his first major league action since a 26 1/3-inning run with the Braves in 2015, when he pitched to a 5.13 ERA. But Banuelos has been far better in Triple-A, as his 3.98 ERA with 8.4 K/9 against 4.4 BB/9 over 396 frames demonstrates.

Mariners Sign Manny Banuelos To Minor League Deal

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The Mariners announced Tuesday that they’ve signed left-hander Manny Banuelos to a minor league contract and invited him to Major League camp in Spring Training.

Banuelos, 29 next month, once ranked as one of baseball’s premier pitching prospects but has been persistently hampered by injuries. The southpaw has undergone Tommy John surgery, another operation to remove bone spurs from his elbow and more recently been plagued by shoulder troubles. Banuelos did log 50 2/3 innings with the White Sox in 2019, but he was knocked around to the tune of a 6.93 ERA with an ugly 44-to-33 K/BB ratio and 12 home runs allowed.

That was only the second season in which the once-vaunted lefty has pitched in the big leagues. Despite a lack of success at baseball’s top level, though, Banuelos has notched a career 3.98 ERA in 376 innings of Triple-A work, averaging 8.4 K/9 against 4.4 BB/9 along the way. Seattle still isn’t certain how it’ll round out the back of the rotation, so Banuelos will compete for a spot either in the fifth rotation slot or in the bullpen this sprin

White Sox Outright Four Players

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The White Sox announced today that they have outrighted four players. Leaving the 40-man are southpaw Manny Banuelos, outfielder Ryan Cordell, and infielders Ryan Goins and Matt Skole.

The Chicago organization noted that all four players will reach minor-league free agency at the conclusion of the World Series. Accordingly, they’ll soon hit the open market.

Banuelos, 28, made it back to the majors for the first time since his 2014 debut. But he scuffled to a 6.93 ERA in 50 2/3 frames with the White Sox.

Cordell and Skole also received somewhat longer looks in their second seasons of MLB action. The 27-year-old Cordell was given 247 plate appearances but managed only a .221/.290/.355 batting line. Skole posted a meager .208/.275/.236 output over eighty trips to the plate.

Of the group, Goins obviously has far and away the most extensive experience. The gritty, light-hitting infielder actually had something of a career year at the dish, turning in a .250/.333/.347 slash in 163 plate appearances. That translates to a personal-best 86 wRC+.

White Sox Purchase Contract Of Hector Santiago

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The White Sox announced today that they have purchased the contract of lefty Hector Santiago. He’ll take the 40-man spot of fellow southpaw swingman Manny Banuelos, who was moved to the 60-day IL to make way.

In other news, backstop Welington Castillo was reinstated from the family medical emergency leave list. He’ll technically serve as the 26th man in today’s doubleheader, meaning that the team will have to make a further active roster move thereafter.

Santiago, 31, is in his third stint with the Chicago organization. He opened his career on the South Side and also pitched there last year. Santiago struggled in a brief MLB stint earlier this year with the Mets. In eighty total frames at Triple-A in 2019, he carries a 4.50 ERA with 71 strikeouts and 32 walks.

Pitcher Notes: Zimmermann, Yanks, Cahill, Mariners, White Sox

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The Tigers announced that they’ve reinstated right-hander Jordan Zimmerman from the 10-day injured list. Zimmermann, who hasn’t taken a major league mound since April 25 because of a sprained ulnar collateral ligament in his pitching elbow, will start Wednesday. Zimmermann’s nearly two-month absence added injury to insult in what has been a terrible Tigers tenure for the 33-year-old. A run as a front-line starter for the Nationals convinced the Tigers to give Zimmermann a five-year, $110MM contract entering 2016, but he has come up way short of expectations since then. Now 33, Zimmermann owns a 5.29 ERA/4.92 FIP with 6.34 K/9, 2.26 BB/9 and a 36.7 percent groundball rate in 427 innings as a Tiger.

  • Yankees southpaw Jordan Montgomery seemingly isn’t recovering as hoped from June 2018 Tommy John surgery, as Kristie Ackert of the New York Daily News reports. Montgomery exited a live batting practice session Tuesday after throwing 15 pitches. Manager Aaron Boone said afterward Montgomery “had a little discomfort.” The Yankees hope Montgomery will be able to help their pitching staff later in the season, Ackert notes, but that seems even less likely now. The 26-year-old functioned as a full-time starter from 2017-18, a 182 2/3-inning span in which he recorded a solid 3.84 ERA/4.09 FIP with 8.23 K/9, 3.10 BB/9 and a 41.4 percent grounder rate.
  • Angels righty Trevor Cahill will make a rehab start Friday with Triple-A Salt Lake, Jeff Fletcher of the Orange County Register was among those to report. Cahill has been on the IL since June 8 with soreness in his pitching elbow. The offseason signing got off to a horrible start before then, as shown by a 7.18 ERA/6.37 FIP in 57 2/3 innings.
  • The shoulder MRI that Mariners righty Felix Hernandez underwent Tuesday didn’t show any new issues, per Greg Johns of MLB.com (Twitter links). As a result, Hernandez – out since May 11 – will resume his rehab, likely throwing a few bullpen sessions before taking the ball again in the minors. Meanwhile, teammate and fellow righty Sam Tuivailala will begin a rehab stint at the Single-A level Friday. Tuivailala, a July 2018 Mariners trade acquisition, has been out since last August with a right Achilles injury.
  • The White Sox have placed southpaw Manny Banuelos on the 10-day IL with shoulder inflammation and recalled righty Carson Fulmer, Daryl Van Schouwen of the Chicago Sun-Times tweets. This is the second time in 2019 that shoulder issues have sent Banuelos to the shelf. Injuries have been a common theme throughout the pro career of Banuelos, once a well-regarded prospect with the Yankees. The 28-year-old has pitched to an ugly 6.90 ERA/6.78 FIP with 8.28 K/9, 5.91 BB/9 and a 33.3 percent grounder rate in 45 2/3 innings (13 appearances, eight starts) with the White Sox this season.

Quick Hits: SoxFest, Banuelos, Rule Changes

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White Sox GM Rick Hahn recognizes there will be some disappointment and finger-pointing if the White Sox don’t come away with Manny Machado or Bryce Harper this offseason, but he’s not ready to say more about the ongoing negotiations than necessary. Hahn did flat-out reject the idea of signing both free agent stars, as two monster contracts would hamper the long-term flexibility to a harmful degree. While Hahn spoke openly about Machado rumors, he is unhappy with the number of leaks, both true and untrue, coming from the Southside, per the Athletic’s James Fegan. As irritating as the leaks are, Hahn assured the crowds at SoxFest that they will continue to confront leaks of all varieties with honesty. Fegan also notes that former top prospect Manny Banuelos has generated more hype than usual for an unestablished 27-year-old. The Sox preempted Banuelos’ minor league free agency by acquiring him via trade from the Dodgers in November. Banuelos has been around the block, spending time with the Braves and Yankees, starting six games for the former in 2015. He put together a solid campaign last season for the Dodgers’ Triple A affiliate, throwing 108 2/3 innings, with a 9-7 record, 3.73 ERA and 10.52 K/9 versus 3.48 BB/9. Now, rumblings from the league office, and more from SoxFest in Chicago…

  • Baseball’s offensive landscape has shifted due to record strikeout totals, increased bullpen usage, shorter stints from starting pitchers and more meticulous long-term bullpen management. These trends have been spotlit by the increased media attention paid to service time manipulation, most-famously in the case of Kris Bryant, as well as the Tampa Bay Rays’ recent revelation that has already made its way into common baseball parlance: the opener. In an effort to curb these trends, Major League Baseball is getting set to present the Players’ Association with rule change proposals that may include the institution of a pitch clock, reinstating the 15-day disabled list and increasing the amount of time an optioned player must spend in the minor leagues, back to 15 days from the current minimum of 10 – though nothing official has yet been released, per Ronald Blum of the Associated Press. The league office could force feed these rule changes with a year’s notice, but Commissioner Rob Manfred is unlikely to use such an aggressive tactic. It will be up to the players, then, to decide whether these proposals are good for the game.
  • Of note, the league has made strides in quickening the pace of the game, as average 9-inning game times sped up from 3 hours, 5 minutes, 11 seconds in 2017, to 3 hours and 44 seconds last year. Trimming mound visits without a pitching change from 7.41 to 4.01 certainly had a hand in cutting out those 4+ minutes. Quantifying the impact of these changes is difficult, giving baseball circles more than enough fodder for debate, though it seems the “state of the game” conversations will continue throughout the next two years leading up to the expiration of the current CBA in 2021. 
  • White Sox pitching coach Don Cooper won’t kowtow to the wisdom of the opener anytime soon, per Daryl Van Schouwen of the Chicago Sun Times. The way Cooper sees it, the role of the starter on the White Sox has not changed, and he still expects to get 6+ innings out of his guys. That’s been a tough ask of late as the Southsiders have built their staff from the ground up via development and trades. Next season is a key year for their young arms, as the trio of Carlos Rodon, Reynaldo Lopez and Lucas Giolito look to cement their place in the rotation before the arrival of the next wave of high profile prospects like Dylan Cease, Michael Kopech and Dane Dunning, the latter two of whom are working their way back from injury. Ivan Nova rounds out the top four in Cooper’s rotation, with Dylan Covey in competition with Banuelos for the five slot. There are still plenty of arms on the free agent market, however, and GM Rick Hahn says the team is working on 3-4 potential acquisitions. Given the collective injury troubles plaguing Chicago’s cavalcade of young arms, it would not be surprising in the least to see one or two veteran arms brought into camp on cheap or minor-league deals. 
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